Favourite lemur species

I've heard that 'llama' should be pronounced 'yamma'. I've never heard it pronounced that way in zoos.

Yes, it is pronounced this way in Spanish as when there are two l's in spanish it is pronounced with a y.

The word itself though would have originally been either of indigenous Quechua or Aymara origin.

Very few people know the name sifaka but I don't think I've met anyone in my age group who doesn't know of Zoboomafoo, even if they never watched the show. Google doesn't even mark that as an unknown/incorrect word as I write this :p

~Thylo

I am definitely not in your age group but I hadn't actually heard of zooboomafoo until I met my significant other who told me about it and grew up watching it.

Wow, the google thing shows that the programes name has entered popular lexicon.

Yeah I've heard 'she-fukk' is the correct pronunciation. IIRC Fossa is 'foosh' or something like that.

~Thylo

The word Fossa pronounced in the Malagasy way of "Foosah" sounds funny here in Brazil as this sounds like the caipira ( Brazilian "hilly billy" / "redneck") slang word for nose / snout.
 
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I've heard that 'llama' should be pronounced 'yamma'. I've never heard it pronounced that way in zoos.
The sound of the double "L" in spanish can be pronounced in many ways, depending of the region you are. It can be 'liama', (speaking the first sylable very fast); or 'yama', as you mentioned. There are also some other different pronunciations, but I think only a spanish language studious would be able to explain the different accents in the right way. Anyway, like Onychorhynchus coronatus said, this is a word that comes from the native languages of South-america, but once there's no way to know how they pronounced it in those times, I consider the latin spanish way the right one to pronounce it
 
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The word Fossa pronounced in the Malagasy way of "Foosah" sounds funny here in Brazil as this sounds like the caipira ( Brazilian "hilly billy" / "redneck") slang word for nose / snout.

Yeah, that's very funny. If we pronounce the right way, it would mean snout/nose, and if we pronounce the word like Foh-sah, wich is the way I have heard in Brazil, it would be the same as the word 'moat/pit' in brazilian.
 
Yeah, that's very funny. If we pronounce the right way, it would mean snout/nose, and if we pronounce the word like Foh-sah, wich is the way I have heard in Brazil, it would be the same as the word 'moat/pit' in brazilian.

Yes, its interesting the way these words from languages like Malagasy can resemble words that have totally different meanings in other languages like Portuguese or Spanish.

I'm trying to remember some other examples of this but I can't think of any others right now that specifically relate to animals.
 
Yes, its interesting the way these words from languages like Malagasy can resemble words that have totally different meanings in other languages like Portuguese or Spanish.

I'm trying to remember some other examples of this but I can't think of any others right now that specifically relate to animals.

Words such as dingo, mandrill and morsa(walrus) have quite funny meanings too. Even if dingo doesn't actually mean something, I always related their name to the sound of house handbells (ding dong)... don't know why ha ha
 
The Spanish and Portuguese word for seal for example is "foca" and is pronounced as "fokah" in both.

This sounds like well...a similar rather rude word in English used to describe someone you don't like rather than a pinniped.
 
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